Tag: Pain

“It’s like the ice bucket challenge, but with feelings instead of fingers“

So you remember the ice bucket challenge, right? It was supposed to be a fundraiser thing for ALS or something; instead it became an excuse to dump ice on yourself and film it for Facebook.

Simpler times.

Anyways; I never understood what was “challenging@ about dumping ice over your head. I mean, if anything it’s just a refreshing way to cool off.

I have a better idea.

Instead of dumping perfectly good ice everywhere we put it in a bucket. Then we add a little water, and you hold your hand in the freezing water as long as you can.

Now THATS a challenge. I’m gonna assume you’ve probably never had a reason to purposefully freeze your fingers, but have you ever stuck your hand in a snowbank sans gloves? Or had to stand out in windy, frigid weather with some bit of skin left exposed?

It fucking hurts, but not like anything you’ve felt before.

At first it’s a shock, then you start to feel the stabbing of the cold as your nerves freak out telling your brain “DANGER!”. It might start to ache and throb as the tissues get damaged, the cells literally freezing and expanding.

At a certain point the pain changes, it’s gotten so intense, too intense. With so many neurons sending so many signals of different pains the brain short circuits.

It turns off the pain. Your appendage, now slowly dying in the cold, feels like nothing.

Nothing.

Not better, not ok, but void. A vacuum in the place where something was.

That’s where I’ve been for a while now, but instead of my body it’s my brain. My heart & soul, the place where I’d feel sick over the loss or giddy about <insert things I have enjoyed>.

It’s worse somehow, like emotional constipation so bad it’s all just impacted feelings stuck somewhere deep down; and it ain’t budging.

So yeah. That’s grief some days, at least for me.

Leave me a comment if you’ve ever felt something like this, and how it’s gone for you.

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Family is a 4-letter word

If you’ve spent some time here, read along with the story so far you may have noticed I don’t seem to spend much time with Family.

“Why is that?” You wonder, “With so much loss you’d think the family would come together and support each other. Bloods thicker than water after all…”

Yeah, except when it isn’t.

Except when you spend the anniversaries of your parents deaths mostly alone, keeping busy with as many mundane things as you can find.

When you get a phone call from your mother’s brother on the anniversary of your dads death, a man who only met him a few times over 30 years ago, and he is the Only Person to ask “How’re you doing?”

When you remember the last moments of your dads life, holding his hand surrounded by strangers. Those two other people that share his DNA and a vague resemblance to you, those same two you haven’t seen since that fateful afternoon last August.

Family, the way it’s portrayed by the media as this steadfast harbor in a storm, is a lie.

Family is no more than those people who share a vague genetics connection to me. Who’s concern only extends as far as how I might be of use in their times of need.

Family is a curse. A promised lie I can’t help but fall for each and every time it’s spoken. Like some pathetic dog returning to its master despite their indifference and neglect, when even the dog knows it’d do much better if it just stayed out alone.

It hurts to know it’ll never be. I’ll never have the love and support I see taken for granted by so many.

Que sera sera,